F1 News: Mercedes Knew They Were in Trouble From the Start of 2021 Season

"The signs were there from the very, very early running."

Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineer at Mercedes, has spoken about the W13 and the many problems that the team had with the car throughout the 2022 season. He has also admitted that they knew the car was likely to be problematic from the get-go.

Mercedes struggled with major porpoising issues at the beginning of the season and once those were under control it became apparent the porpoising had been hiding a multitude of other issues with the car. 

The team did manage to make some significant improvements towards the end of the year which saw them take their only win of the season at the Brazilian Grand Prix, but they were still miles away from the performance they wanted and that fans are used to from the team.

Shovlin explained in a post-season debrief video:

"The signs were there from the very, very early running, even on the filming day that we did at

Silverstone

.

"We then went for three days in Barcelona and the car was not that competitive, but we were expecting a big update that we were going to bring to Bahrain and that was the point that we realised that we had a serious issue at that test.

"We put the update kit on and it simply didn’t make the car go quicker. It’s been an interesting year from there on, but it has been a lot of work to do to try and get on top of those problems."

Shovlin added that the improvements the team saw towards the end of the season will hopefully be carried over to the W14. He said:

"The big body of work that’s been going on for the last number of months has been to make sure that those issues on the 13 don’t get carried on to the 14.

"We made good progress there and you can see that in some of the later updates, particularly the update that we brought to Austin, put us that bit closer to the front.

"A lot of our focus was making sure we can develop an update kit, bring it to the track and actually see it translate to performance and hopefully the culmination of that work will mean that we can get an altogether more competitive package together for next year."